Air conveyors are frequently used for transporting plastic bottles in industrial plants. In such plants, the bottles are in most cases suspended with their supporting rings in guide rails and are moved forward by means of air. As no complex mechanism is required for this type of progressive movement, such a plant is less susceptible to failures.
In a known air conveyor of the applicant, the application of air is effected in the area of the bottle openings, whereby the driving force mainly acts on the bottle openings. With this method, more than 30,000 bottles per hour can be transported in an air conveyor, and the transport speeds are correspondingly high.
However, as speed is increasing, aerodynamic drag also plays an increasing role. As aerodynamic drag is highest in the area of the largest surfaces of action of the bottles and as only at the bottle openings air is applied to the bottles, the bottles have a very oblique position. This oblique position of the bottles does not have any negative effect when the bottles are being transported. However, when a bottle is to be transferred to another transport device (e.g. a sawtooth or zigzag star) at the end of an air conveyor, the oblique position of the bottles can cause difficulties.